Vanished Read Free

‘Your friend. I saw you walk past me. The man I’d read about on the internet. So when you passed me I couldn’t help but see it as fate. And I suppose I lied a little. I did follow you – but only after I saw you tonight. I followed you to the restaurant because I wanted to be sure it was you. And when I saw that it was, I realized I needed to speak to you.’
    ‘What do you want, Julia?’
    ‘I want you to find my husband,’ she said, pausing and kneading her hands together. For a moment she seemed to shrink into the shadows: head bowed, shoulders hunched, protecting herself in case I turned her away. ‘Six months ago he got on to the Tube at Gloucester Road. And he never got off again.’

3
    Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in a café on Long Acre. Liz had taken my car and gone home, doing a good job of disguising her curiosity. She’d seen enough in the eight months we’d been dating to know this wasn’t how it normally worked. I liked some sort of plan in place before I met the families; liked to know who they were, and where they were coming from. But, with Julia Wren, there was no plan. She was a blank.
    We ordered coffees and sat at the window, neon signs smeared in the drizzle, the sky black and swollen. She laid the printout on the table, manicured hand across it as if scared it might blow away. Often, they were caught halfway between expectation and fear: expectation that this might be the moment their loved ones came home; fear that it would be in a body bag.
    She glanced at me, tucking a cord of red hair behind her ear. I couldn’t tell yet if she was naturally timid or just nervous. ‘I read that you used to be a journalist.’
    ‘In a past life.’
    ‘Did you enjoy it?’
    ‘It definitely had its moments.’
    ‘You got to travel, I expect.’
    ‘I got to see a lot of the world, but it was more like a busman’s holiday.’ I smiled. ‘With added warzones.’
    ‘Where did you go?’
    ‘The States on and off for five years. South Africa before and after the elections. Israel and Gaza, Iraq, Afghanistan.’
    ‘You must have seen some things.’
    An image formed in my head: running for my life through a South African township, bullets ripping holes through the air, bodies scattered across the road, blood in the gutters, dust and debris and screams of pain. ‘Let’s just say you gain an appreciation of what people are capable of.’
    She paused. Rocked her head from side to side as if sizing up her next question. I knew what was coming. ‘Did you give it up because of your wife?’
    ‘Yes.’ I didn’t offer anything more. ‘Why don’t you tell me about your husband?’
    She nodded and produced a photograph from her bag. ‘This is Sam.’
    He was in his late twenties, had bright blue eyes, fair hair and a nose that seemed too big for his face. He was unusual-looking, but not unattractive. In the picture he was dressed in a black suit and red tie, and standing in the front room of a house. At a guess, he looked about five-nine, but a little underweight. The suit didn’t fit, and there were minor hollows in his cheeks where his skin seemed like it was pulled too tight. I made a note to ask her about that later: people were underweight either because they were ill, weren’t eating enough – or had something to worry about.
    ‘When was this taken?’
    ‘Six months ago. Tenth of December.’
    I pulled the photograph in closer. There was a Christmastree reflected in one of the windows. ‘How long after this did he disappear?’
    ‘He was gone six days later.’ She paused. ‘The sixteenth.’
    About two hundred and fifty thousand people went missing every year in the UK, and while two-thirds of them were kids under eighteen, the next commonest group was men between the ages of twenty-four and thirty. Sam Wren was a perfect fit for the statistics. The reasons why adult men went missing were often predictable – relationships, financial issues, alcoholism, mental illness – but